


When you look up, there are the stars

by tobiasdrum



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fairy Tale Style, Gen, Kinda Dark, M/M, everyone dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-06 15:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8758702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobiasdrum/pseuds/tobiasdrum
Summary: Viktor didn't know it, but for all that he felt 23, he never made it past 14. He denied his death so strongly, he tricked even his body into showing what he felt, and only the few that believed in the old ways, the old gods, saw him as he was. Unfortunately for Parlan and his husband, Viktor, spirits in general, really, were always, always, bad luck.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This piece reads out of time order, so it might be confusing, but its worth it I promise.

For as long as Viktor could remember, he had lived in this forest. There might’ve been a time, when he was too young to remember, that he lived elsewhere, but if there was, his papa never told him about it. It was all he knew, and in some ways he was grateful for that, as when he was young, Viktor’s papa would tell him stories about the world unknown to him. Stories about great wars, the burden of duty, and other such terrible things. As a child these stories stopped him from leaving the forest, made him fear the unknown. There was always one story in particular that his papa would tell him, one about the people, that he remembered vividly.

_“Now Viktor, my son, there is one thing you must always remember about the people outside of this forest.”_

_“What is it, Papa?  
_

_“The people that live outside of our forest are greedy, Viktor, they take and take and take and give nothing back. If you give them an inch they won’t just take a mile, they will take everything there is to take.” Viktor’s papa looked defeated as he said this, like Viktor imagined Atlas did when he took the sky’s burden. “If you can, Viktor, never leave this haven, never leave this forest, because if you do, the world, the people that I speak so ill of, they will force you to do things that you do not want to do, they will do to you what they did to me.”_

_“Papa, what did they do to you? Are you okay?” A nine year old Viktor asked._

_“Zaichik, when I was king of Utrye, as you know I once was, there was a terrible war, the first in centuries. As ruler of the land I was tasked to lead the army at important battles. There were so many, my son, so many to fight in. In one my brother, your uncle, was killed. In another I lost my eye. After the war was over, and remember this Viktor, no war is won, because there are no winners in something such as war, and I returned to my throne, the people of my land became slowly war-like. Soon, even though there was no quarrel with other natiops, my people, or what used to be them, were crying for blood. There was a rebellion against me, the disgraced king, and so I fled, with only my wife by my side.” At this, Viktor was aghast. Sheltered as he was, he couldn't understand the sins of men. His Papa’s tale had done its job of warning Viktor of the outside world._

It had been almost fourteen years since his papa had last told him his story, but it had always remained with him. Viktor’s papa’s warning had not gone unheeded, nor had it turned to fear. Viktor lived his life peacefully, in his forest haven, taking care of the land that he had inherited, the same land that he intended to give to his own child, should he find someone willing to live like he. With the falling leaves around him, apple and poplar, his stores full, and the animals of the forest set for the winter, Viktor settled in his chair next to the crackling wood, and waited with bated breath for the onslaught of cold and white, content in his setting.

⚲  


The winter was hard. The snow came too late and lasted too long. It came long after there was anything to harvest, no berry, mushroom, or even spare seed to be found. It came hard, several feet of snow landing in blizzards that lasted days, weeks on end. It covered his sheep, even sheltered by their barn as they were, froze some of them in their sleep, the lambs particularly vulnerable. He moved his horse in with him a month ago, the poor mare chilled to the bone and too skinny with hunger. At this point there was nothing he could do help her, with no feed left, even for himself.

It was so cold even the pine trees were dying, suited as they were to warmer temperatures. The needles made nothing other than tea, and he wouldn’t pull up the bark, even in these conditions, Viktor was becoming desperate. He couldn't survive on his own, not in this winter, even if he'd been living this way forever, knew no other way. Viktor’s reluctance, however, made him wait. He wanted nothing to do with the outside world, the boundary of the forest his bubble, a veritable canyon because of his uncertainties. A week passed in the same conditions, then two, his sheep dropping off like flies, his pigs all dead. He himself was weak with hunger and cold. There was no other option, Viktor had to leave, take the stash of money his papa had, and buy food. He didn’t want to, but it was the monster-humans, or death. For all that Viktor knew he was a coward, he had no wish for death, so soon as he could muster the strength to move, he would take his mare and ride to the people his papa had warned him about.  


⚲ 

Four months later and the picture Pyralis Orlov had painted for his son seemed like one giant hyperbole. Viktor, all that time ago, had ridden into town and immediately received help, sent to the town’s healer and his mare taken to the stables, fed and groomed. Though the town was also going through the roughest winter in recorded history, they had banded together, rationed their food, and most importantly, survived. During Viktor’s time in Nishka he spent most of his time around two men, Parlan Utkin and his husband, Hadrian. He grew to like these two, even trusting them enough to tell them the location of his animals, his home, so they could tend to it. Parlan was a farmer, he grew mostly grains but had enough vegetable patches and fruit orchards to feed his family and make a little profit. Hadrian, or as the town gossip went, was royalty, or at the very least descended from it. He was very popular in the town, mostly because his pomegranate trees always bore heavy with fruit, so that the whole town could partake.

After Viktor was released, the oppressive cold of the super-winter started to fade, tough he couldn’t yet make the journey back, the path still snowed over. Nishka, though a peaceful town in the country neighboring the one his papa said he was to rule, called Vasnad, had always been wary of strangers, especially ones that seemingly came out of nowhere. Viktor was lucky, however, him arriving emaciated as he was, then his subsequent slow return to health under the careful watch of the Elder and Parlan had endeared him to the whole town. Despite his papa’s warnings about men Viktor liked these people, they eased a knot that he didn’t know he had in his chest. Parlan and Hadrian especially, he had his first friends in them and truly, he never wanted to let them go. For Viktor, the earliest weeks of spring were kind.

However, they were not kind to everyone. Least of all Hadrian Utkin, who, unknown to everyone, including Parlan, was experiencing his last weeks in life. It was testament to Hadrian’s acting skills, and not Parlan’s inattention, that Parlan only just noticed that Hadrian seemed more tired at night, and weaker the next morning. Even without the necessary knowledge, it was stressful for Parlan.

“Hadrian, won’t you tell me what is wrong, my dear?” Parlan’s voice was panicked, his husband being so inattentive to the open flame of the oven was so unlike him, and he worried.

“Mal, my duck, there is nothing wrong, please stop your worrying, the future is inevitable, and whatever will be, will be.” Hadrian’s voice deep and dark as it was, was enough to sooth Parlan’s and Viktor’s fears, though if either had paid even the slightest more attention, his words would have frightened them.

Two weeks later, he died.

Two weeks later, Viktor’s new world, carefully built, crashed down on him.

Two weeks later, Hadrian died, dragging Parlan with him, in soul, but not in body.

Two weeks later, after a massive fight, the kind that rips and tears at your heart, the kind that leaves you feeling empty and sad, the kind that reveals where you really stand with people, Viktor returned to his desolate haven, and never came back out.

⚲

Viktor’s deep breath seared his lungs and scorched his nose, air burning everything on the way down. His world was painted angry reds, sickening blues, and fearsome golds, every other color fading against the might of Prometheus’ wrath. His home, the only he had ever known was burning to a crisp, black and grey taking the place of what used to be beautiful greenpinkwhiteyellowpurplesilver, and there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could do. The fire that had been lurking in the distance, too close but so far, not ignorable, never so, had finally, finally drawn near in Viktor’s sleep, consuming his garden, his tied horse and sheep, his life. His home that had been so winsome, so welcoming was burning, burning, burning to ash and dust leaving nothing but death and years away the promise of life. So far were those years from Viktor, they would occur too long after he would be forced to move on, starving and without shelter, he would have to leave his home, his safety.

The heat was oppressive now, Viktor would have to move soon-now! he knew, or he would be charred as black as the trees in the distance. And Viktor had no desire to die in fire, he held with those that favored ice, he would not perish twice, had no want for his end. Bit by bit he moved one leg and then the next, slowly ever so slowly, like a newborn foal , his limbs weak because of his panic, his excess of adrenalin. Viktor moved, surrounded by falling poplar trees, crawling his way out, then faster, stumbling, as the flames moved ever closer, ever hotter, and ever more dangerous and violent. He was falling, falling down holes and tearing himself up on rocks and glass centuries old, and stabbing himself on pine needles he thought were soft and the brown of the ground was confusing him and then- oh. 

Then he was burning with the land that he had grown up in. And the fire was hotter than he remembered his hearth to be. But to Viktor, it made a sick sort of sense. That he would die with this forest. Die with all the plants and animals he had seen grow and flourish under his care. His papa, Pyralis, so inaptly named, as his papa was born and died, gently, in winter, he should be named Pyralis, of fire, becau- no. His papa named him Viktor for a reason. He was Viktor, he was, he would be, and by the trees and life that he had lead here, now gone, never to return to him, he was going to live up to his name, the Viktorious, the conqueror. He started struggling again, remembering to keep low, regretting that he hadn’t before, his lungs black with smoke and pumice, doing his best to avoid the obstacles that had once, still tripped him up.

It felt like ages. Viktor felt he must have spent years getting to the edge of the forest, he might have, for all he knew, it was a long and treacherous seven day journey to the edge, even with his best speed. But he was here, free of the fire, for now at least, free and alive, able to thrive in this new life he was unwittingly thrust into, and unhappy as he was, he would get over it. But for now, he was tired, so tired, like chains dragging him to the earth, shackling him there and with his struggle finally over, he could rest. The ground he rest upon was covered in soft grass, long leaved and tickling, and safe in the cocoon of earth and plant, Viktor slept, and slept and slept, and then didn’t.

Three days later, Parlan Utkin, the farmer that owned the lands surrounding the forest stumbled through his crops, still tipsy from a night of hard drinking with his brother, and came upon the body of Viktor, only just dead, and still lingering warmth fading slowly in the heat of summer. He only barely noticed Viktor, let alone the smoke still rising, the fire still fighting, and still growing closer. When he did, having to step on Viktor’s carcass to do so, he muttered only one thing.

“Damn Orlovs, crazy nutters, going into the wild like they did.”

He, still, did not notice Viktor’s cause of death, not starvation, or dehydration, like he thought, but the third and fourth degree burns that spread across his body, fire charring him like the poplar trees that had only just missed him when they fell. Parlan was always cold. But that was okay, he would be warm soon, anyways.

⚲

After Hadrian, Parlan’s life went to pieces. The man who he’s known since birth, the man who gave him his first kiss, took his virginity, taught him how to farm, the man who stopped him from killing himself at 16, 21, 33, was gone. Parlan wanted desperately to follow, but with Viktor and his brother constantly around and watching, he couldn’t. He was vaguely grateful, somewhere deep down, because he knew Hadrian wouldn’t want him following, but right now he needed to be selfish. Hadrian was his favorite person and no one understood the significance behind that. Without Hadrian, Parlan was barely a person. After a week, he couldn’t take it anymore, he turned to alcohol, like his mother had when his father died, nearly twenty years prior. It was the only thing that could make him forget, even if it was only for a short while. It was the respite he needed, and rarely got.

Another week passed pointlessly. Viktor, silly, stupid, idiotic, Viktor, who was almost 15 years younger and almost like a child, tried to help him. But what good was help to those who shunned it? Viktor, to Parlan, knew nothing of the world, needed to be guided, was a babe in all ways but his age. Parlan did not appreciate someone so new to the world trying to lecture him, to tell him what HIS husband would have wanted for him. Life was already so hard to live, without his rock, nearly impossible, why was this kid, this non-human who shouldn’t even be away from his forest, who acted like he didn’t know that he was more than everyone else, trying to tell him to stay alive, when right there, right in front of Parlan, he was killing himself too! His thoughts slowly faded into a buzz in the back of his head as he drank more and more and more.

When he woke up the next morning, hangover raging, Viktor had disappeared.

⚲

Three years later  


⚲

Parlan Utkin, was a farmer. In the town he lived in, Nishka, if you asked, most would sooner call him an alcoholic.

“It’s in his blood, I say!” The Butcher would remark.

“Of course it is, remember his mother, Yulia? After her husband died-

“And before, I’d suspect- yes, if I remember correctly she stopped in for our brew at least once a week!” That’d be the Beer Master's Wife.

“-she really let loose, didn’t she. Shame her boy’s done it now too.” And, of course, the florist, the biggest gossip in town, would have so much to say about poor Parlan Utkin and his blood. Every person in town, sans a few, would conveniently forget his struggle with mental illness, and his late husband’s sudden death at 36. They would forget how Parlan grows the best food, even today, and how the Elder confides in him, they forget the boy-spirit that drifted through town and became attached to him, and those that do remember, usually the followers of the old ways, shake their head in pity, because spirits are always, always, bad luck.

Parlan, still drunk from the night before, stumbled his way across his land. If he were any more sober he would notice the smoke rising ahead. He would notice the body not 20 yards from him. And most importantly, he would remember that he was not 16, that Pyralis Orlov was indeed dead, and Viktor, his son, was someone he cared about deeply. But he was not anywhere near the realm of sober, so he knew none of these things, and when he finally did notice the body, by stepping on it no less, he thought the idiot King of Utrye had finally kicked the bucket. He thought of privileged people trying to survive with no training, and did not notice that the body was burnt to a crisp. He did not go report to the village elder he should’ve. Parlan Utkin, a man in misery, absolutely smashed, wandered back to his home, and promptly fell asleep, missing his chance of warning the people of his village of their impending doom.

Parlan, after his husband’s death, felt perpetually cold. On his deathbed, he was anything but.


End file.
